


Stranded

by DesertScribe



Category: Original Work
Genre: Choose Your Own Adventure, Other, Possible Character Death, Possible Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 14:30:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21037769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertScribe/pseuds/DesertScribe
Summary: What should have been a simple scouting mission takes a turn for the unusual when a disaster destroys Artin's spaceship and leaves him stranded on a planet with some interesting wildlife.(In the tradition of the CYOA stories which I read in my childhood, 50% of the possible endings are death.)





	Stranded

**Author's Note:**

  * For [heeroluva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/heeroluva/gifts).

* * *

# 01

It had been an uneventful journey to get there, but Artin's arrival in the distant solar system which he had been hired to scout was the complete opposite. The ship's computer handled most of the approach, only waking Artin out of stasis once they were deep within the binary stars' heliopause and nearing the outermost of the three planets in the system's Goldilocks Zone. That was all part of routine for solo missions like this one.

What was not routine was the way that the ship gave a sudden series of violent lurches accompanied by violent banging noises while Artin was still standing naked next to the stasis tube, halfway through the awkward but necessary process of scraping the biggest globs of stasis gel off of his body and throwing them back into the open tube so he would not clog the shower drain when he went to wash off the rest. The lighting immediately switched to flashing yellow, and siren started blaring as if Artin could have somehow not noticed the ongoing shaking and banging or the feeling of the air pressure dropping fast enough for it to make Artin's ears pop.

"Warning, multiple high velocity impacts detected," intoned the ship's computer, "hull integrity compromised and life support compromised. Immediate repair necessary." Before Artin had a chance to finish picking himself up off of the floor where the initial sudden movement had thrown him, the shaking of the ship grew even worse. "Warning," the computer corrected itself, "report to emergency pod. Catastrophic hull breach and total life support failure. Immediate repair impossible."

Well, that didn't sound good at all.

What should Artin do?

**Immediately run for the emergency pod. >> Go to section 02.**

**Throw on his uniform and then run for the emergency pod. >> Go to section 03.**

* * *

# 02

Artin picked himself off the floor and immediately ran out of the room and down the hallway which led toward the closest of the ship's emergency pods. Getting to safety was his biggest concern. He would worry about nudity and the coating of goo later. Or, at least, he thought he would worry about those two problems later. Later never came, though, not for Artin. The shaking of the ship would have made it difficult to maintain his footing even under otherwise ideal conditions, but the thick coating of slippery stasis gel which still clung to Artin's otherwise bare skin made it nearly impossible. His gel-covered feet slid out from under him as he tried to turn the first corner. He tried to catch himself against the wall as he went down, but his hands were just as slippery as his feet, so all he accomplished was leaving a shiny trail of gel smeared down the wall to show the exact flailing arc of his descent. The ship lurched yet again, in a new direction this time, causing the wall to jerk sideways and collide with the side of Artin's head with even more force than would have been produced by the fall alone, knocking him unconscious.

Artin did not have time to regain consciousness before the last of the ship's oxygen bled out into space through the holes in the hull. He was not the only person to have ever died naked and covered in goo and the only human around for trillions of miles, but such facts were of no consolation to the dead.

**<<>>The End<<>>**

* * *

# 03

Artin picked himself off the floor and staggered over to the wall near the shower door, where one of the ship's assistant droids had helpfully left his uniform hanging on a hook for him. He dressed himself as quickly as possible. The layer of stasis gel still clinging to his body squelched unpleasantly as he did so and would probably be a real pain in the ass to clean out later, but it helped everything slide into place even faster than usual, like a coating of lube.

"Warning," the computer repeated, now in stereo as the announcement issued from both the room's public address system and from the personal comm unit built unobtrusively into the uniform's collar, "report to emergency pod. Catastrophic hull breach and total life support failure. Immediate repair impossible."

Putting on the uniform cost Artin several valuable seconds of escape time, but it was a matter of practicality rather than modesty. The uniform was a single piece, covering Artin's whole body below the neck, including his hands and feet. When coupled with the helmet stored in the emergency pod, it could function as a basic enviro-suit, which would be a valuable tool in surviving long enough for rescue. Even without the helmet, putting on the uniform was a lot faster than cleaning off the rest of the stasis gel but had the same benefit of keeping Artin from needing to fight the dangerous slipperiness while getting to and then operating the emergency pod. With his uniform securely fastened, Artin was able to sprint to the emergency pod and get the hatch closed and sealed without a single fumble or misstep.

Artin strapped himself into the seat at the pod's primary controls and engaged lifeboat protocols, which launched the pod away from the crumbling ship and then released a distress beacon once they were a preset distance away. Then there was nothing for him to do but wait while the pod carried him to the nearest planet with a breathable atmosphere, which was the first of the planets he had meant to be scouting for this mission. It looked like he was going to be getting a lot more up close and personal with his target world a lot sooner than scheduled.

The pod's landing was rougher than Artin would have liked, but he was a firm believer in the centuries old saying that any landing you could walk away from was a good one, and Artin was still walking just fine even if the leftover stasis gel was still squishing around between his toes and other more intimate places with every step. Any landing where you could reuse the craft afterward counted as a great landing, but judging by the damage that Artin could see on the pod's exterior once he stepped outside, this landing probably only qualified as good but not great. It could have been a lot worse, Artin thought to himself as he surveyed the place that was to be his new home for the foreseeable future.

Now he just needed to decide what to do next…

**Find some water so he can wash the stasis gel off. >> Go to section 04.**

**Investigate those strange things he sees in the distance which could either be bushes or tentacle monsters. >> Go to section 07**

* * *

# 04

The pod had landed near the edge of a high plateau, which stretched away as far as Artin could see in one direction, its flat expanse only occasionally broken by dark branching shaped which could have been either simple bushes with their raised branches moving in the light wind or some kind of alien tentacle creatures. Artin would need to get closer to determine which it was, because it was impossible to tell for certain at his current distance. Either way, they appeared to be fixed in place and therefore investigating them could wait.

At the moment, Artin was far more interested in what lay in the opposite direction in relation to his little crash site. A river snaked its way along near the base of the plateau and then turned and emptied into a large body of water only a few kilometers away. The climb down the slope would be challenging, but the water called to Artin, both for survival purposes and because the gel squishing around inside his uniform was becoming more obnoxious by the second, and he wanted to finally get it cleaned off of him. He did not want to rush too much, though, so he took his time to be sure of his handholds and footing.

A little less than halfway down the slope, there was a small outcrop of rock with a conveniently flat upper surface, so Artin paused there for a few minutes to catch his breath. The rock stuck out far enough to give him a good view of the rest of the slope below him. The ground to the left of his perch was steeper and had larger rocks than the ground to the right, but climbing down the ground to the right would require a much longer and circuitous path to get to the water than if Artin went to the left.

Which way should he go?

**Take the path to the right. >> Go to section 05.**

**Take the path to the left. >> Go to section 06.**

* * *

# 05

After careful consideration, Artin opted to take the longer but more gentle route. It was better safe than sorry and all that. Confident that he had made the best possible decision, Artin climbed down off the right side of the rock he had been resting on and continued on his way. By his calculations, he would be scrubbing that obnoxious gel off of himself in about an hour.

It was slow going, but Artin reached the edge of the water safe and sound. The water was warmer than he expected and a little more sulfurous smelling than he would have preferred, probably due to underground geothermal features, but his portable scanner said the water was free of toxins, so Artin was happy to shuck his uniform as quickly as possible and jump into the water with it without further delay.

It was like wading into a slightly stinky hot tub, which is to say that it was basically like heaven compared to how the rest of Artin's day had been going so far. For several long minutes he simply swam in small circles while letting the warm water ease the tension out of his muscles, then he got down to the business of getting clean. The initial swim had loosened most of the stasis gel his hair and skin, and the rest came off with some light rubbing. If he happened to work himself into a half-hard state while scrubbing the gel away from his cock and balls with his hands, that was no one's business but his own.

With his body blissfully gel-free, Artin turned his attention to his uniform. He turned it inside out, gave it the same scrubbing that he had given himself (minus the fondling), and then draped it across a rock in the sun to dry. With nothing to do but wait, Artin decided that if the water felt like a hot tub then he might as well treat it like one. The half submerged rocks had been eroded into smooth curves by the elements, and Artin only needed a few moments to find a spot where one of the curves formed a perfect seat that would allow him to lounge with his head and shoulders above the surface while he luxuriated in the warm water.

Artin settled in, let himself relax, and was asleep in minutes. He awoke sometime later from a delightful wet dream to discover that he was no longer as alone as he had been and that the contents of his dream were based on reality. A mix of fear and arousal shot through him as he took in the sight of the sinuous nudibranch-like creature as big as his arm which had nestled onto his crotch and was currently giving him the best blowjob of his life. Its frilly outer appendages, which might have been fins or gills or something else or all of the above fluttered in the water while it felt like smaller but similarly shaped internal structures were fluttering in the same way against Artin's rock-hard shaft as the creature sucked him off. All good things must come to an end, however, and eventually Artin was unable to hold back any longer another orgasm rocked him.

Apparently satisfied with its meal, the creature released Artin's softening cock and swam back into deeper waters, while Artin remained where he was and enjoyed the afterglow. If this welcome was anything to go by, then he expected he was going to enjoy his time on this planet more than he could have possibly hoped for.

**<<>>The End<<>>**

* * *

# 06

After careful consideration, Artin opted to take the steeper but shorter route. It was not any steeper than what he had already climbed down without any trouble at all. The other, longer route might not be as steep, but the difference did not look like it was enough to justify all the extra horizontal distance it would require. Confident that he had made the best possible decision, Artin climbed down off the left side of the rock he had been resting on and continued on his way. By his calculations, he would be scrubbing that obnoxious gel off of himself in less than half an hour.

Unfortunately, Artin only made it a few steps further along his chosen path when he placed his weight on an innocuous looking section of ground which appeared no different than the area around it but was far less stable. The large rock under Artin's feet began to shift from his added weight. Then, before Artin could jump to safety, it began to roll downhill, triggering the other rocks around it to do the same, until it had become a full landslide thundering down the steep incline and taking Artin with it. Not even a hard-shelled enviro-suit would have stood a chance against so many tons of falling rock.

When investigators finally arrived in response to Artin's distress beacon, all they found were small shreds of his uniform. The paste that his body had been beaten into by the falling rocks had long ago been consumed by the local microorganisms and incorporated into the environment.

**<<>>The End<<>>**

* * *

# 07

The pod had landed near the edge of a high plateau. When Artin looked down over the edge, he could see that a river snaked its way along near the base of the plateau and then turned and emptied into a large body of water only a few kilometers away. The climb down the slope would be challenging, but the water would be necessary, both for survival purposes and for eventually washing away the gel which was still squishing around inside his uniform and becoming more obnoxious by the second.

At the moment, though, Artin was far more interested in what lay in the opposite direction in relation to his little crash site, where the rest of the plateau stretched away as far as Artin could see, its flat expanse only occasionally broken by dark branching shaped which could have been either simple bushes with their raised branches moving in the light wind or some kind of alien tentacle creatures. Artin would need to get closer to determine which it was, because it was impossible to tell for certain at his current distance, and no time seemed better to investigate than the present. This kind of thing was why Artin had become a planetary scout, so even if he was stranded it was still his moment to shine, if by 'shine' one meant 'potentially fuck an alien.'

The nearest of the shapes was a little over a kilometer away, and when Artin reached it he was disappointed to discover that it was just a bush, and a dead one at that. At least it would be an easy source of fuel for a fire once his emergency rations ran out and he needed to start finding and cooking his own food. He began collecting some of the smaller pieces of wood to take back to the emergency pod when movement further along the plateau caught his eye. Most of the other nearby shapes appeared to be nothing more than additional bushes, some dead like the first one and others covered in small dark red leaf-like structures.

However, one of the shapes nearby was moving slightly differently than the ones around it, as if under its own power instead of pushed by the wind. Artin had found the tentacle monster he had been looking! He dropped his pile of sticks and ran to embrace all his xenophilic dreams.

When investigators finally arrived in response to Artin's distress beacon, they found him in a state of fucked-out bliss, covered in hickeys and unwilling to leave the planet.

**<<>>The End<<>>**


End file.
